In a deadly power struggle with opposing paramilitary forces, the Sudanese army looked to take the upper hand on Sunday, bombarding their bases with air strikes, according to witnesses.
According
to one doctor's group, since the conflict in Sudan began, at least 97 civilians
have died and 365 have been injured.
The
paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), under the command of General Mohamed
Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti, the deputy leader of the council, and
army troops loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of Sudan's
transitional governing Sovereign Council, erupted in conflict on Saturday.
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A
dispute over the RSF's incorporation into the military as part of a transition
towards civilian administration set off the first such outbreak since both
joined forces to overthrow veteran Islamist tyrant Omar Hassan al-Bashir in
2019.
According
to the U.N. mission in Sudan, Burhan and Hemedti agreed to a three-hour break
in hostilities from 4 p.m. local time (1400 GMT to 1700 GMT) to allow for
humanitarian evacuations. However, the agreement was mostly disregarded after a
brief period of relative calm.
Residents
in the Kafouri district of Bahri, which has an RSF base, across the Nile river
from the capital Khartoum, reported hearing warplanes and artillery boom as
night fell.
According
to eyewitnesses who spoke to Reuters, the army was resuming airstrikes against
RSF bases in Omdurman, Khartoum's sister city over the Nile, and the nearby
Bahri neighborhoods of Kafouri and Sharg El-Nil, forcing RSF members to flee.
The
U.N. Security Council, the European Union, the African Union, and the United
States have all called for an immediate end to the hostilities that have the
potential to exacerbate instability in a wider region that is already unstable.
On
Sunday, neighbors and regional organizations stepped up their efforts to put an
end to the violence. The office of Kenyan President William Ruto posted on
Twitter that Egypt has offered to mediate the dispute between the warring
factions in Sudan and that the Intergovernmental Authority on Development of
the regional African bloc intends to dispatch the presidents of Kenya, South
Sudan, and Djibouti as soon as feasible.
Rising
tensions over the RSF's incorporation into the military were the cause of the
fighting that broke out over the weekend. The signature of an international
agreement with political parties on a transition to democracy following a
military coup in 2021 has been postponed due to disagreement on the timeline
for that.
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